Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
At present, hardware capabilities have increased enough to allow both, with proper
planning. The production of graphic assets for mobile games requires several gim-
micks to make things work properly. Mobile devices have, in fact, relatively limited
hardware capabilities: they lack the computational power of PCs and consoles. Since
games give the most stress on the hardware capabilities they run on, it is very im-
portant to have assets that minimize the requirements while providing an optimal res-
ult.
Another important aspect that must be taken into consideration for mobile games is
that, differently from home consoles and PCs, handheld devices rely on their battery.
The more computationally expensive the app (or game), the shorter the battery life.
There's no point in having a beautiful game running on the device, if it runs for a few
minutes and then the device shuts off. Again, optimization of a game's system re-
quirements is a key factor, starting with graphics.
The hardware of today's devices varies very much from one model to the other, so
that for a game to run smoothly on the highest number of devices, it must have the
lowest possible computational requirements.
With so many different mobile phones available, each with its own hardware config-
uration, it can be a hard struggle to have your game running smoothly on the highest
number of devices, which is mandatory for it to be profitable.
Fortunately, there are ways to overcome such obstacles. A good starting point is
comparing the hardware of different mobile phones. The following link points to one
such site:
http://www.mobiledia.com/phones/compare/compare.php
First, several techniques have been developed to allow the production of quality
graphics that minimize the hardware requirements for games.
Second, technological development constantly pushes forward the hardware capab-
ilities of mobile devices, and there are several models today that are equipped with a
Graphic Processing Unit ( GPU ), a piece of hardware that specifically takes care of
computing graphics. This way, the mobile phone's CPU is relieved from taking care
of all the calculations required by a game, and as a result, games can run smooth
and have excellent graphics at the same time.
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